Friday, April 10, 2009

Of Prague: 20th Century Glass

Happy Good Friday! Here's some religious art to celebrate. But Modern, of course, as befits the Holla's hip contemporary outlook.

Riga is noted as having some of the best Art Nouveau architecture in Europe. Nothing against Riga, but this might be because Prague does so much stuff so well that it's easy to overlook all the Art Nouveau going on there. For example, this Czech fellow Alfons Mucha. Think of a an Art Nouveau picture - I bet you're thinking of something he did. Or you're not thinking of anything, but we'll let that slide. Anyway, the guy was Czech, and after rising to fame in Paris, returned to Prague to create nationalist art in his distinctive style, such as this window in Prague's most prominent cathedral, perhaps since nationalism was also pretty hip in early 20th-century Europe. In any case, I'd seen the guy's art probably about a million times but never knew who he was until now -- another broadening travel experience.

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Guatemala? Rio de Janeiro? Huh?

This journal once chronicled the experience of a low-level American diplomat living in Guatemala. Then he went to Latvia, and Afghanistan, and then back "home" to Washington, DC for a bit. He is now serving in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. If you are one of the few people of no blood relation to the authors who has come here in search of Guatemalan content, here are a few choices from the archives that we like:

In Afghanistan, the photographic opportunities were often limited to what we could sneak with a point-and-shoot camera out the bulletproof window of a speeding SUV. But sometimes we got out and about. A few favorites from that tour:

We've also vacationed aggressively in each region we've been posted in, and taken some epic home leave trips, usually leading to better photos than those where we were posted. Those photos are included in the blog, but somehow holiday snaps seem beneath this sidebar.